Simply
doing what's expected isn't enough anymore. In her talk, Wengert argues
that in-store tech has the power to enhance the retail experience by
addressing retail's worst traits - long queues, poorly trained staff,
challenges of finding things. All the while,supporting the best ones -
the community, discovery and tactility.

With the world of tech at our fingertips, to reinvent the store
environment, brands need to be a part of the experience economy.
Providing a memorable, unexpected and "just for me" experience for loyal
and new customers alike.

Whether it's a boutiques or
adepartment store, brick and mortar isn't going anywhere. But in order
to survive, it's going to have to transform. A lot.

Designing cashless cities

"Chinese design and tech principles and practices are leading the world, but are often overlooked."

Opening
with this quote from John Maeda's 2018 Design in Technology Report,
Shanying Leung used his session to showcase how payments in China have
rapidly evolved - even beyond phones.

Thanks to his work on
AliPay-- China's main mobile payments platform of >500 million
users--you can navigate the public transport system without a wallet,
using biometric voice security and facial recognition for purchase.

He
also scoffed at the western view that the QR code is dead when AliPay
is enabling peer-to-peer payments via personal QR codes.

Australia
and New Zealand has high rates of contactless payments, sure. But it
seems like, if you really want to see what the future has in store, look
to China.

VR for empathy training in trauma

"See
one, do one, teach one." That's the current approach to learning
emergency trauma surgery; diving into the deep end. But when that deep
end is life and death, it's no wonder 40% of trauma surgeons have PTSD.

In
Amanda Sammann's undeniably passionate presentation, she argues that
"pre-exposure" through VR is our best weapon against burnouts, mental
breakdowns and panicked decision making in trauma wards.

By
quite literally putting you in someone else's shoes, VR could help
surgeons be more empathetic toward their patients, coworkers and even
themselves - from first response all the way through to rehab.

Sammanns
states "this isn't just cool tech, it's human lives". As advertisers,
we often flippantly mention that we're, in fact, not saving lives. But
what if we could help?

Death and legacy in the digital age

The digital afterlife is not talked about a lot. But Rebecca Blum, Senior Strategist at frogSF, certainly got us thinking.

Maybe
it's slightly morbid, or maybe tech has advanced so quickly we haven't
had the chance to think about it, but we've had a glimpse in to the
future through the likes ofBlack Mirror, Minority Report, Westworld
etc., and we know that the tech is catching up to those views of the
future. But how much of it is already here?

Well, we're creepily close.

In
early 2016, Eugenia Kuyda created "Roman Bot" out of texts from her
best friend so they could keep talking after her passing. And last year
the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Centre revealed the
interactive 3D hologram of survivor Adina Sella. That's only two
examples.

With 428 Facebook users dying every hour, what should
be the fate of our social accounts? Our emails, texts and voicemails?
Should we give someone our password? Cancel the accounts? Curate them?
Or immortalise our digital selves?

There's a lot of questions that need to be answered.

A conversational future: Making technology adapt to us

We're
(obviously) at an exciting point in the UX field. With a shift from
flat interfaces to gestures and voice, the way we interact with tech is
changing.

Both Laura Granka (Experience Research) and Hector
Ouilhet (Design) have been at Google for over 10 years, and are
currently leading their respective disciplines for Google Search. They
presented on the relationship between people and technology and how it
evolves and expands--or disappears--over time.

For Google, this
new era of UX begins with a shift in focus from promoting "features"
(i.e. maps) to journeys. Journey-based UX means that predictive
technology will be able to pre-empt customers' questions and deliver
real-world solutions - all in real-time.

This shift for Google,
and the UX discipline, elevates products, services and utilities to a
higher order - helping people solve problems before they even pop up.

As
marketers it means a whole new world of adaptable messaging for the
individual. One where we may even be able to predict their next
interaction. Kinda cool and an opportunity for us to be highly
contextual and highly creative.

Don't tell my mother I'm in advertising, she thinks I play piano in a whorehouse.

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